


Inspecting Loss

by Supernovapple



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley Thinks Aziraphale is Dead, Ficlet, M/M, Sort of introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 08:47:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supernovapple/pseuds/Supernovapple
Summary: A moment of grief after a bookshop burns.





	Inspecting Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Baby’s first good omens fic! Just a tiny little somethin’ to test the waters

So this is grief.

It burns. Not in a way he has ever felt. Not in the way Falling had burned. Not in the way the flames of the bookshop had licked his skin. This is—

Cold.

It _burns_.

It burns in a way that freezes from the inside out. The feeling starts in his chest and works its way to the rest of his human shaped body. He grips the steering wheel, thinking there must be some way to force the ice out of his fingertips.

So hot, so cold, it’s numbing.

He has known misery. This is something else entirely.

Six thousand years of love and friendship up in flames. Gone in an instant. All because he wasn’t there with his angel when it mattered most.

Maybe he shouldn’t be driving. Humans drive when they’re upset. What kind of upset?

The burning kind?

His mind has gone a bit blank. Less of the white noise type and more of the _too much_ type. Too many thoughts trying to process all at once—so many that they scramble over each other in a race to the forefront of his mind, all ending up incoherent gibberish. He can almost feel his brain vibrating inside his skull. To many, too much, don’t hit the pedestrians, the world is ending, his world has already ended.

Aziraphale.

_Aziraphale is gone_.

He knows. He knows that. Still, he can’t believe it. That just can’t be. He and the angel were together at the beginning—_before_ the beginning and they are supposed to be here at the end. Together. Together, together, _together_, just like how they’ve always been.

Is this all part of The Great Fucking Plan? He looks up to the roof of his Bentley. Imagines the cloudy sky and the eternal beyond. And he asks.

Is he still being punished? Still suffering the Fall after all this time? Must be. This is all his fault and he knows it. Aziraphale is perfect—loyal to heaven through it all and maybe sometimes he’s a little bitchy, but he is _good_. And he would be alive if not for his _fraternization_.

He’s killed his best friend.

A lump forms in his throat. He can’t swallow past it. He shouldn’t need to swallow past it. He is a demon. It shouldn’t be there in the first place. And yet.

He doesn’t much care for how human his body is behaving right now.

This can’t be what it’s like for them. Humans. They don’t have thousands of years to perfectly curate relationships. They rarely even get a hundred. No, he has it worse. He’s got to have it worse.

_Aziraphale is gone_.

The Bentley pulls over without his permission, coming to a stop as he stares blankly ahead.

He imagines only being able to know Aziraphale for one hundred measly years. Maybe he’s got it wrong. Maybe humans do have it worse. Never knowing another being so completely that they might as well be an extra limb. Might as well be the air because to live without them means sure death.

To live without Aziraphale means sure death.

His body spasms. Shakes like the leaves on terrified plants.

It’s dizzying.

He’s on fire.

He’s frozen.

“Angel,” he hisses and tiny drip drops fall off his chin. His face is wet. Soaked from six thousand tears and more still pouring. “Angel, I’m burning again. It’s so much worse this time.”

He might lose it. He might start begging the empty air to come back _just come back to me please._ Even if the world is slated to end by day’s end. Even if he’s not worth running away with. _Come back to me and we can end together._

He might end up in a bar, ready to get wasted and make his angel appear if only as a figment of his imagination.

Maybe alcohol can put the fire out.

He is so very—

Cold.

***

He doesn’t know how to tell Aziraphale that he thought he’d lost him to holy fire. He doesn’t know how to explain that nothing like that can ever happen again because there’s no way he could ever survive another second of it.

Aziraphale saw him in that bar. Surely he knows. Surely he doesn’t actually need to say _I thought you were dead and that I indirectly killed you and it very well almost ended me._

Another day, maybe. Now is not the time because here with his angel on the first night of their sparkly new beginning, there is no room for freezing thoughts. And certainly not burning memories. Just—

Warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> [Mandatory tumblr link](https://space-apples.tumblr.com/)


End file.
